Commentary
2020 Dispatching, A Short Story
The following is a fictional account written in the Year 2000 predicting what train dispatching might or could have been like 20 years later. It was published as a sidebar in the Federal Railroad Administration’s “Five-Year Strategic Plan for Railroad Research, Development, and Demonstrations,” March 2002. I was, in retrospect, excessively optimistic about how train dispatching would change over two decades. Perhaps the title of the story should be changed to “2050 Dispatching”?
